Multinational insurance holding company, Tokio Marine Holdings has announced the launch of Tokio Marine Future Fund – a Silicon Valley-headquartered corporate venture capital fund.
Tokio Marine has committed €42 million to the initial fund with plans to deploy more capital into subsequent fund cycles.
In a press release, it says that the fund will invest in seed and Series A stage companies across North America, Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia.
The fund will focus on a broad range of markets, which includes insurtech, fintech, mobility, health care, climate risk, cybersecurity, and AI/automation, with check sizes ranging from $500,000 to $3 million.
The new venture investments will also extend Tokio Marine’s commitment to supporting start-up innovation.
The Tokio Marine Future Fund team includes more than 10 partners and members across the spectrum of investment.
In addition, Tokio Marine Future Fund has partnered with Silicon Valley and Japan-based venture firm, World Innovation Lab (WiL), to drive the new funds investment strategy and process.
Tokio Marine is a key LP in WiL’s growth funds, which focus on Series B and later start-ups across a broad range of sectors.
WiL will power the investment strategy, and the firm will act as the CVC fund manager, led by Steve Pretre, who manages WiL’s investments across the fintech and insurtech sectors.
Pretre brings decades of operating experience across a variety of start-up sectors, with a focus on the insurtech space as part of the early executive teams at Risk Management Solutions (RMS), one of the very first venture-backed insurtech start-ups.
“The global investment opportunity for early-stage innovative start-ups in the United States and emerging markets is immense,” said Yoshi Yoshida at Tokio Marine Future Fund. “Tokio Marine’s global presence gives us the ability to help accelerate the growth of start-ups tackling new opportunities across insurance, fintech and a range of adjacent sectors. We are excited to help empower a new generation of entrepreneurs.”
Furthermore, Tokio Marine Future Fund has already made several investments to date, including TrustLayer – an insurtech company automating insurance verification with machine learning and AI, and Voxel, a real-time risk identification platform which is powered by computer vision that enables security cameras to automatically identify hazards and high-risk activities.
